The Purifying Rain
by SithMasterJosh
Summary: Original vignette with original characters, set in the Coruscant Undercity. A boy living a harsh life finds a power within himself he never knew existed.


_Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip._

The purifying rain falling on Coruscant washed away all sins. But washed them where exactly? It was simple physics: a liquid will always seek out the lowest point. That was just gravity. The sins of Coruscant were washed down into the Underworld. And the lowest levels of the planet-wide city were rife with sin of their own.

The rain that fell there was putrid and brown, not a single drop made it through the forest of skyscrapers or billions of aircraft untouched. Every last molecule of water that poured into the Undercity had been tainted by the dirt and grime of the Uppercity. The highest levels got to shine, pristine and clean, while all of its filth was washed below, forgiven, forgotten. Except by those uncounted billions unfortunate enough to call the Undercity home.

Davros Korban hated the rain. It always brought with it the stench of garbage, of mold, and of death. The pools that formed would sit for months, stagnant and stinking, breeding all manner of biting insects and corrosive slime. The rain made the Undercity, if possible, even _more_ depressing.

The young man, perhaps in his late teens, flipped up his hood and pulled his cloak tighter around his thin frame. Not a particularly tall or imposing figure for a human, Davros was a frequent target for gangs, thugs, and pickpockets. His long grimy brown hair, not having seen a sonic scissor in many years, was wild and unkempt. Wholly unremarkable in every way, his only outstanding feature was his eyes, which shone a brilliant blue against the drab, dirty brown rags that made up his clothes.

On that rainy day, as on all days, Davros walked alone. He had been alone for years, since his mother had vanished in those very Undercity streets. He had lived down in the perpetual night of the Coruscant Underworld for his entire life, a product of the opulence of the Upper levels; for to have extreme wealth, you must also have extreme poverty. And down there, the poverty was _extreme_. It was all Davros had ever known.

All around him, as most pathetic creatures sought refuge from the rain, those hailing from the waterworlds of the galaxy came out of the woodwork to soak it all up. Quarren, Mon Cals, and even the odd Gungan stood out in the rain, allowing their filthy clothes to become saturated, enjoying the rare treat of moisture against their skin.

Davros just sneered at them. _Disgusting_, he thought. _These creatures treat the filth of the Upperworld as if it were the nectar of the gods. _Many in the slums had given up, accepted life for what it was. But not Davros. He was better than this garbage, greater than these pathetic excuses for life-forms. He wasn't content to spend the rest of his life in these conditions. One day, he would claw his way out of the fetid sewers if he had to kill every single Coruscanti to do it.

Though his dingy chrono said it was only midday, in the Coruscant lower levels, night was whenever you chose to sleep. Davros lay on a thin, threadbare mattress on the trash-strewn floor of the abandoned hovel he had claimed some weeks ago. It was dark, dank, and had no power or running water, but it was shelter. It afforded him protection from the elements and a place to sleep.

Davros's stomach growled. It had been nearly three days since he had last eaten. He concentrated on sleep, hoping to make his gut forget that it was empty. He curled himself into a ball and drifted into an uneasy and dreamless sleep.

He stifled a gasp as he snapped his eyes open, fully awake. How long he'd been asleep he didn't know. But _something_ had woken him up. It hadn't been a sound so much as a _feeling_. Something in the back of his head urged him to wake, to rise, to run. As he tried to sift through the myriad thoughts fluttering around inside his head, the door to his hovel burst open. Even though his eyes were well-adjusted to the dark, there was just too little light to make out more than vague shapes, but he could tell that there were several beings, possibly as many as five. Then, just as suddenly as he had woken, his entire world exploded into light.

"Looks-a like we've got a squatter, eh, boys?" A gruff Toydarian, hovering on comically small, fast-beating wings, had activated a floating lamp, illuminating the room. "And who are-a thee, might I be so bold as-a to ask?" His tusks were broken and stained; his tiny useless legs hung limp below a distended yellow potbelly. He surrounded himself with thugs of various species, from Human to Twi'lek to what may have been one of the Nikto subspecies. In all, Davros found himself confronted by six beings, none of which looked happy to see him. But he stifled his fear.

"This is my dwelling. I ask you all to leave. _Now_."

"Oh-ho!" the Toydarian gave a hearty laugh. "I give-a thee one thing, no one will be calling thee a coward! But thee are-a mistaken, boy. This is _my_ dwelling and if-a thee would like-a to leave with the limbs thee entered with, certain…_reparations_…are in order." The goons grunted in what Davros could only assume were amused chortles.

"I have been here for weeks," Davros spat back. "If this _is_ yours, you clearly don't care much for it. I needed it and have taken it as my own. You would do no different."

The tiny floating alien nodded. "Indeed, thee is-a correct. However," he said, raising one finger, "if-a the owner were to come back to claim ownership, _I_ have-a the muscle to fight that claim. Thee cannot match that, methinks."

Davros didn't allow his face to betray his thoughts: the Toydarian was right. He couldn't hope to stand up to them. A cold ball of fear had formed in the pit of his stomach, freezing him from the inside out. Anxiety built in his chest; his breathing slowly began to quicken, nearly in sync with his racing heart.

"So," the crime boss went on, "my arithmetic tells-a me that thee has-a two choices: pay for the time thee has-a spent here or my boys here will take it from-a thee. And what we take-a from thee will be worth a good deal more than this dump, I promise-a thee that."

Davros shook his head. "I have nothing to give."

"Oh, that is unfortunate news," the Toydarian said with a cruel grin. "Boys," he bellowed, "take our fee out of his-a hide. Then use his hide for whatever thee can-a make of it. Human skin makes a wonderful money pouch." He patted a leather drawstring bag fixed to his belt and chuckled.

The five goons closed in on the young man, whose fear now threatened to buckle his legs and send him toppling to the ground. His breath caught in his throat, his mouth became parched. He was about to die and he was falling apart. Thoughts swam in his head, regrets, despair. Then anger, furious, violent, white-hot anger. Anger that he had been forced to live the life he'd lived; anger that he had nothing and now the only thing he could claim ownership of, his own life, was about to be stolen from him; anger that he would die in the slums, in a dingy, filthy hovel, having never fulfilled the promise he made himself that he would rise above this squalor and be great.

This all took place within his head in a span of seconds. The icy fingers of fear had melted and been replaced by fire. His anger and his utter hatred threatened to overwhelm him. His vision began to blur. He could barely make out the advancing figures, so blinding was his rage. There was a pressure building in his chest; something, it seemed, was threatening to burst forth from his body. The last thing he saw was one of the thugs draw a nasty-looking vibroblade before the intense pressure suddenly released and his world went black.

_Drip. Drip. Drip. Drip._

The sound of rain gently roused Davros from inky unconsciousness. His head was splitting, his mouth was dry, and his vision seemed to be gone. _No, not gone_, he thought as his brain continued to wake. _It's just dark._ A dim rectangle of orange light resolved itself in his vision: the door. It was burst open. What happened?

There had been an alien, a Toydarian. Had that really happened? It felt so much like a dream, as if he'd been sleeping for weeks. Even now, the memories seemed to be slipping through his fingers like so much sand.

He stood and shuffled toward the door, his foot encountering something small. Instantly a brilliant light burst into being and rose to hover two meters in the air. After his eyes had adjusted, Davros nearly choked at what he saw. Surrounding him were bodies: a Toydarian, two Humans, a Nikto, and two Twi'leks. All of them seemed to have the same pained grimace frozen on their faces, as though the pain itself had been so intense that it killed them.

He should have felt horror, should have felt sick to his stomach to see such an awful sight. But instead, he grinned. Then, surprising even himself, he began to laugh, a deep, hearty laugh, the sort one reserves for times of immense pleasure and amusement. He had done this. He wasn't sure how, but he had. He'd killed them all. Against all odds, he had faced these beings and slaughtered them.

He felt good; he felt _powerful_. There was something different about him, as though he were viewing the world through new eyes. He had a sense that scum like these would never be a problem again, that he'd just been given the power he needed to claw his way out of this world.

After picking the bodies clean of whatever he could use, he deactivated the lamp and plunged the room back into darkness. He had always been most comfortable with the darkness.

But now, the darkness was comfortable with _him_.


End file.
